WestConn showed poor judgment

Published 1:00 am, Friday, June 23, 2006

The job of a graduation commencement speaker is to commend the class on their achievement and inspire them going into the future.

At the WestConn graduation ceremony,
Catherine Crier
chose to deliver a "Bush is a criminal" speech.

How sad and small minded Ms. Crier is to look out on a field filled with happy graduates celebrating their achievement with their family and friends and choose to deliver a divisive partisan political attack.

But the ultimate failure was the liberal elitist WestConn administration which abused its authority by ramming a
Democratic Party
political rally on those who simply attended to receive their hard-earned degrees.

I am also very negative of the Bush presidency, but graduation was neither the time nor place to inflict one-sided partisan views on those who had not chosen to attend a political event at all.

Those referring to free speech hypocritically fail to mention leftists protesting conservatives before they even speak.

They are the ones who would be outraged had her topic been Democratic corruption, such as
John Kerry
's intentionally false congressional testimony about Vietnam,
Hillary Clinton
's Whitewater obstruction or
Harry Reid
's influence peddling.

Ms. Crier discussing positive values that make her a Democrat would be fine, but her bitter Bush bashing on what was supposed to be a joyous occasion reflected poor taste and judgment.

Her job was to motivate all graduates, not deliver a mean-spirited political attack on many students' views.

Unlike Ms. Crier, I praise all the WestConn graduates, not just those in agreement with my politics.

My graduation advice is to build a positive vision for people to respond to rather than tearing down your opponents at every appropriate and inappropriate opportunity like the WestConn administration and Ms. Crier unfortunately chose to do.